Mobile Devices and Mobile Applications

Expect tablet applications that will collect health history information from your patient in the waiting room, educate them about clinical procedures chair side or finalize financial arrangements.  Accessing your practice’s data remotely over your smart phone or tablet will become common.

Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing

There was a rush to cloud computing over the last couple of years.  This is now being tempered with the realization that some applications are far more usable when the data is stored locally.  Digital imaging is one of these.  Hybrid cloud/local approaches will become the norm.

Actionable Analytics

Developing dashboards that can give you a quick view of the administrative health of your practice will continue.  You will be able to see negative trending earlier when action will be more effective and also allow you to identify and track your success with high-need patients.

Enterprise App Stores

Dentrix announces its G5 Dentrix Market Place putting a variety of dental applications a credit card purchase away.  Expect more of these “app stores” to appear with other vendors.

Like any year-end prediction, we won’t know for certain if these constitute 2013 trends until this time next year.  Right clicks or wrong clicks – time will tell.

Karyn Zerr will be posting next week on New Year reflections and resolving.  I’m looking forward to what she has to say.